27 Sep Kale – super food

We feed the hard outer leaves to the chickens and find that the egg yolks are very yellow – I always feel I need to explain to guests that these are eggs from chickens fed on Kale and Spinach leaves. For nutritional value you can google kale and come up with a million sources of information.

If there is any doubt regarding the properties of kale as superfood – take a look these eggs: the ones on the left are store bought organic large eggs ; the ones on the right are from our hens!

My daughter’s Dutch friend Anneke told us that Kale freezes well and actually tastes sweeter after being exposed to cold – which means that we now pick the leaves and leave them in the fridge before we use them. You can wrap the leaves in a moistened kitchen towel before you pop it into the fridge and you’ll find that it stays fresh for days.  The Dutch  use it  in a traditional winter dish called stamppot boerenkool, which is a mix of kale and mashed potatoes, sometimes with fried bits of bacon added to it.

Kale  can be classified by leaf type:

Curly-leaved

Plain-leaved

Rape kale (we saw large fields of these in New Zealand, where it is used for animal feed)
Leaf and spear (a cross between curly-leaved and plain-leaved kale)
Cavolo nero (also known as black cabbage)

Try this delicious Smoothie recipe:

• juice of 1 lemon
• 1 banana
• 1 thumb fresh ginger
• 1 cup frozen pineapple chunks
• ½ cup apple juice
• 3 leaves kale
• 1 cup cucumber